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Cdumbia  ©ntbctjsittj) 


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LIBRARY 


for  tl|p 
tnrr? asf  of  th?  SItbrarg 


II 


l^illiam  Eoscae  d)aper 


THE   COLLAPSE   OF    SUPERMAN. 

GERMANY   VS.    CIVILIZATION. 

THE   LIFE  AND   LETTERS   OF  JOHN    HAY. 
2  vols.     Illustrated. 

LIFE    AND    TIMES    OF    CAVOUR.       2    vols. 
Illustrated. 

ITALICA  :  Studies  in  Italian  Life  and  Letters. 

A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  VENICE. 

THE  DAV^N  OF  ITALIAN  INDEPENDENCE: 
Italy  from  the  Congress  of  Vienna,  1814,  to  the 
Fall  of  Venice,  1849.  In  the  series  on  Conti- 
nental History.     With  maps.     2  vols. 

THRONE- MAKERS.  Papers  on  Bismarck,  Na- 
poleon III.,  Kossuth,  Garibaldi,  etc. 

POEMS,   NEW  AND  OLD. 

HOUGHTON  MIFFLIN  COMPANY 

Boston  and  New  York 


THE  COLLAPSE  OF  SUPERMAN 


THE  COLLAPSE  OF 
SUPERMAN 

BY 
WILLIAM  ROSCOE  THAYER 


BOSTON  AND  NEW  YORK 
HOUGHTON  MIFFLIN  COMPANY 

1918 


5? 


COPYRIGHT,    I917,   BY  THK   CURTIS   PUBLISHING   COMPANY        ^ 
COPYRIGHT,  I918,   BY   WILLIAM   ROSCOB  THAYER 


ALL    RIGHTS   RESERVED 


Published  January  iqi^ 


To  My  Comrades 

IN  THE 

American  Rights  League 
OF  Boston 


My  thanks  are  due  to  the  proprie- 
tors of  The  Saturday  Evening  Post 
for  permission  to  reprint  —  with 
additions  —  this  satire  from  that 
journal,  in  which  it  first  appeared 
on  November  10,  1917. 

W.  R.  T. 


THE  COLLAPSE  OF  SUPERMAN 


J\  FEW  years  ago  a  strange  myth 
went  up  and  down  the  world.  We 
were  told  that  the  Germans  were 
Supermen;  and  as  they  themselves 
said  so  which  of  us  could  doubt  it? 
For  the  Germans  had  once  a  high 
reputation  for  scientific  precision, 
and  it  could  not  be  supposed  that 
either  this  or  their  native  modesty 
would  permit  them  to  magnify,  by 
even  a  hair's  breadth,  their  virtues 
or  their  attainments. 

If  you  repeat  a  declaration  often 
enough,  the  world  either  dismisses 
you  as  a  bore  or  kills  you  as  a  fan- 
atic or  ends  by  believing  you.    In 

1 


THE  COLLAPSE  OF  SUPERMAN 

one  way  or  another  it  gets  rid  of 
you.  So  the  German  claim  was 
beheved  without  a  thorough  sifting 
of  the  evidence. 

If  in  a  company  of  ordinary  men 
all  but  one  should  shrink  to  Lilli- 
putian size,  that  one  simply  by 
keeping  his  natural  proportions 
would  be  a  giant  among  them. 
This  is  what  the  German  Gullivers 
assured  us  had  happened;  and  ap- 
pearances seemed  to  confirm  them. 

In  the  course  of  a  generation  the 
Germans  had  surpassed  the  other 
nations  in  applying  science  to  in- 
dustry. In  some  commodities  their 
brands  were  the  best;  in  nearly  all 
their  average  was  better  than  that 
of  their  competitors.  Though  they 
made  few  of  the  cardinal  discov- 
eries in  science  or  in  invention,  they 

2 


THE  COLLAPSE  OF  SUPERMAN 

quickly  caught  up,  and  adapted  or 
improved,  the  discoveries  of  others. 
They  organized  a  system  of  edu- 
cation as  complete  as  that  of  the 
Jesuits  and  quite  as  far-reaching; 
for  it  took  the  German  child  from 
the  time  he  left  the  kindergarten 
and  guided  him  until  he  left  the 
university.  It  developed  his  men- 
tal faculties  to  work  most  effi- 
ciently according  to  the  commands 
of  his  official  masters;  it  taught  him 
reverence  for  discipline;  it  revealed 
to  him  the  importance  of  patient 
labor  on  subjects  which  seemed 
infinitesimal  or  irrelevant.  During 
the  first  three  quarters  of  the  nine- 
teenth century  this  German  educa- 
tion had  also  scientific  accuracy,  or 
truth,  as  its  aim;  and  it  was  so 
fruitful  that  scholars  from  Europe 

3 


THE  COLLAPSE  OF  SUPERMAN 

and  America  went  to  Germany  to 
profit  by  it,  while  German  profes- 
sors strode  over  the  earth  investi- 
gating, taking  notes,  and  adorning 
the  landscape  with  their  robust  — • 
if  not  always  Apollonian  —  figures. 
Greater  than  any  discovery  in 
science,  however,  was  the  German 
discovery  that  if  you  have  many 
millions  of  persons  all  trained  by 
the  same  method,  you  can  treat 
them  as  you  could  so  many  million 
empty  rifles  —  you  can  load  each 
with  your  favorite  cartridge  and 
aim  it  at  whatever  target  you 
choose.  And  this  is  what  actually 
happened.  TMien  German  educa- 
tion had  reduced,  or  raised,  the 
Germans  to  the  level  of  perfect 
machines,  their  master,  swollen 
with  military  ambition  and  with 

4 


THE  COLLAPSE  OF  SUPERMAN 

dynastic  ends,  came  along  and 
loaded  them  for  his  own  purposes. 
In  old  times  every  American  colo- 
nist kept  his  gun  within  easy  reach, 
lest  he  should  need  it  to  shoot  at  an 
unexpected  Indian  or  bear.  Won- 
derful is  it  to  think  that  ten  million 
or  more  Germans,  living  flesh-and- 
blood  Germans,  stood  ready,  like 
so  many  mechanical  weapons,  de- 
void of  will,  judgment,  or  choice, 
—  empty  barrels,  —  to  be  loaded 
and  fired  in  whatever  direction 
their  master  aimed  them. 

WTien  the  Germans  saw  that 
other  peoples  lacked  their  own  as- 
tonishing organization,  they  began 
to  feel  contempt  for  them ;  and  this 
contempt  reacted  so  as  to  puff  up 
their  own  self-esteem.  They  drew 
the  unsafe  deduction  that  all  meth- 


THE  COLLAPSE  OF  SUPERMAN 

ods  except  theirs  must  be  bad. 
Which  of  us  has  not  had  the  priv- 
ilege of  hstening  to  the  German 
Gelehrter,  the  sum  of  whose  tajk, 
lecture,  or  harangue  has  been: 
"What  I  don't  know  is  n't  knowl- 
edge"? And,  in  truth,  is  Gulliver 
to  be  blamed  for  perceiving  that  he 
is  a  giant  in  comparison  with  the 
Lilliputians  round  him?  Gulliver 
had  no  reason  for  suspecting  that 
his  eyes  were  out  of  order;  why 
should  the  Germans  suppose  that 
they  were  suffering  from  unbridled 
vanity  —  that  disease  for  which  no 
oculist  has  a  remedy?  Ji  they  ap- 
plied scientific  tests,  they  got  re- 
sults that  confirmed  them,  for  to 
them  science  had  become  a  mirror 
that  reflected  their  own  figures. 
Cold  statistics  proved  that  they 

6 


THE  COLLAPSE  OF  SUPERMAN 

were  beating  their  competitors  in 
industrial  progress;  that  they  had 
the  largest  number  of  available  sol- 
diers in  proportion  to  population; 
that  they  excelled  in  the  details  of 
municipal  government;  that  they 
counted  fewer  illiterates  than  their 
neighbors;  and  so  on  —  each  proof 
serving  to  stimulate  their  mega- 
lomania. 

We  ordinary  mortals,  who  have 
never  had  the  slightest  reason  for 
supposing  that  we  are  taller  than 
our  fellows,  must  not  be  too  harsh 
toward  the  Teutons  who  suffered 
from  this  illusion.  Each  of  us 
doubtless  cherishes  his  particular 
vanity  —  small,  of  course,  in  keep- 
ing with  his  non-German  size.  If 
we  are  immune  from  megalomania 
the  credit  is  due  to  our  insignifi- 

7 


THE  COLLAPSE  OF  SUPERMAN 

cance,  for  that  malady  attacks  only 
the  great;  and  therefore  the  Ger- 
mans, more  than  any  other  people 
to-day,  are  likely  to  catch  it.  In 
their  case  it  had  become  epidemic 
by  the  year  1914.  So  far  as  it  ap- 
pears, no  single  German  remained 
to  say  then:  ''Brethren,  perhaps 
we  are  really  not  so  colossal  as  we 
think.  Let  us  take  a  foreign  yard- 
stick and  measure  ourselves  again." 
Instead  of  this  the  gospel  of  the 
Superman  was  shouted  into  every 
Teutonic  ear.  The  Prussians  re- 
membered that  they  had  won  three 
wars,  and  they  knew  that  in  all  the 
world  they  had  the  most  powerful 
military  organization,  prepared  for 
use  at  a  moment's  notice.  The  su- 
premacy of  German  music,  of  Ger- 
man education  —  but  why  specify? 

8 


THE  COLLAPSE  OF  SUPERMAN 

—  of  German  everything,  needed 
no  demonstration.  Even  Peasant 
Michel  exulted  in  the  conviction 
that  he  was  a  Superpeasant  and 
that  he  enjoyed  the  luxury,  un- 
known to  his  class  in  other  coun- 
tries, of  eating  Superturnip  and 
Supersausage. 

Obviously  the  Superman  could 
not  be  satisfied  with  the  philoso- 
phy, ethics,  or  religion  by  which 
ordinary  men  lived.  The  giant 
must  have  the  giant's  robe,  not  the 
swaddling  clothes  of  an  infant.  So 
the  prophets  of  Supermania  de- 
vised a  philosophical  and  ethical 
system  which  embodied  its  ideals, 
and  they  created  a  deity  they 
called  Gott  —  a  strangely  compos- 
ite creature  who,  when  analyzed, 
turns  out  to  be  four  parts  war  god 

9 


THE  COLLAPSE  OF  SUPERMAN 

of  the  Goth-and- Vandal  type  and 
one  part  Frederick  the  Great.  The 
care  of  Gott  they  confided  to  their 
supreme  Superman,  the  Kaiser, 
who  had  been  assuring  them  for 
twenty-five  years  that  he  knew 
better  than  any  one  else  what  Gott 
wished.  Even  mortals  admitted 
that  it  was  proper  that  the  mere 
Almighty  should  be  in  charge  of 
the  Almightiest.  Religion  has  not 
been  the  forte  of  the  Pan-German- 
ists.  Listen  to  the  words  of  an 
avowed  atheist.  Professor  Wilhehn 
Ostwald,  the  first  of  the  German 
Exchange  Professors  at  Harvard, 
whose  incorrigible  Prussian  conde- 
scension, flecked  with  occasional 
efforts  at  ursine  affability,  is  still 
cheerfully  remembered  there.  He 
said  in  1914:  "In  our  country  God 

10 


THE  COLLAPSE  OF  SUPERMAN 

the  Father  is  reserved  for  the  personal 
use  of  the  Emperor.  In  one  instance 
He  was  mentioned  in  a  report  of 
the  General  Staff,  but  it  is  to  be 
noted  that  He  has  not  appeared 
there  a  second  time."  ^ 

The  epidemic  of  Supermania 
among  the  Germans  might  have 
been  no  more  than  a  grotesque  di- 
version in  the  humdrum  of  Hfe  — - 
as  when  children  at  their  play  make 
believe  that  they  are  ogres  and 
giants,  kings  and  emperors  —  had 
it  not  been  that  the  Supermen  were 
taught  that  they  must  prove  their 
superiority  by  subduing  or  by  de- 
stroying their  neighbors;  that  war 
was  the  normal  exercise  of  Super- 
men, the  only  exercise,  in  fact,  by 

^  Interview  in  Paris  Temps,  November  26, 
1914. 

11 


THE  COLLAPSE  OF  SUPERMAN 

which  they  could  prosper.   If  you 

tell  a  man  you  are  a  Hercules  and 

he  shakes  his  head  doubtingly,  you 

need  simply  to  kill  him  in  order  to 

kill  his  doubt.    As  long  as  you  let 

him  live,  you  will  be  haunted  by 

the  thought  that  there  is  at  least 

one  person  w^ho  does  not  take  you 

at  your  own  valuation.  In  civilized 

countries,  however,  the  individual 

who  resorts  to  this  simple  means 

runs  the  risk  of  being  tried  and 

hanged  for  homicide. 

"  It  hath  the  primal  eldest  curse  upon  't, 
A  brother's  murder." 

Nevertheless,  when  a  nation  of 
Supermen  adopt  the  precedent  of 
Cain,  they  expect  either  to  exter- 
minate their  victims  or  so  to  crush 
them  that  there  will  be  no  reprisals. 
Cain,  it  should  be  said,  seems  to 

12 


THE   COLLAPSE   OF   SUPERMAN 

have  been  a  hot-headed  youth  who 
killed  his  brother  in  a  fit  of  anger; 
the  German  Superman,  on  the  con- 
trary, does  nothing  without  pre- 
meditation. His  Kaiser  having  re- 
vealed to  him  the  inmost  purposes 
of  Gott,  and  German  science  hav- 
ing confirmed  the  Kaiser's  revela- 
tions, the  Superman  puts  them  into 
action.  It  is  as  easy  as  pulling  the 
strings  of  a  jumping-jack. 

Again  let  us  not  be  too  hard  on 
the  Germans  for  becoming  infatu- 
ated with  the  gospel  of  Supermania ! 
Suppose  that  we  Americans  were 
told  by  our  rulers,  statesmen, 
prophets,  philosophers,  captains  of 
industry,  drummers,  editors,  par- 
sons, professors,  statisticians,  for 
thirty  years  together,  that  we  are 
the  Chosen  People,  could  we  resist 

13 


THE   COLLAPSE   OF   SUPERMAN 

the  flattering  imputation?  Do  we 
always  close  our  ears  when  political 
spellbinders  let  loose  the  American 
Eagle  amid  a  whirlwind  of  patriotic 
eloquence?  Probably  not;  and  yet 
all  the  spellbinders  in  the  United 
States  could  never  persuade  all  the 
Americans  to  think  alike  at  any 
given  moment.  Therein  Americans 
and  other  civilized  peoples  differ 
from  the  Germans.  But  let  us  not 
be  conceited  over  this;  whatever 
credit  there  is  belongs  to  Nature, 
who  made  Yankees  each  with  an 
individual  thinking  piece  which 
secretes  daily  its  necessary  supply 
of  thoughts. 

Nature  delights  in  variety,  how- 
ever, and  so  she  made  Germans 
each  with  a  thought  cavity  in  his 
skull  —  a    cavity    that    remains 

14 


THE   COLLAPSE  OF  SUPERMAN 

empty  unless  the  agent  of  the  Kai- 
ser, or  State,  comes  round  every 
morning  with  canned  thoughts, 
which  he  pours  into  it  just  as  a 
housewife  fills  her  lamps  with  oil 
or  a  chauffeur  his  tank  with  gaso- 
line. 

So  much  for  what  we  may  call 
the  potential  Superman;  so  much 
for  the  estimate  that  the  Germans 
put  upon  themselves  and  caused 
even  foreigners  to  accept.  Let  us 
now  see  how  far  these  Supermen  in 
action  have  come  up  to  expecta- 
tions. 


II 

At  the  end  of  July,  1914,  Williara 
and  his  advisers  —  if,  indeed,  he 
allows  any  one  to  advise  him  —  be- 
lieved that  the  enemies  against 
whom  they  had  long  been  plotting 
were  so  unprepared  that  it  would 
be  easy  to  crush  them  by  sudden 
attack.  For  several  weeks  Ger- 
many had  been  making  such  prep- 
arations for  mobilizing  her  armies 
as  she  could  without  exciting  sus- 
picion. Naturally,  at  the  beginning 
of  August,  when  the  German  troops 
invaded  France  and  Belgium,  they 
took  the  French  and  Belgian  armies 
almost  by  surprise.  Alone  among 
the  forces  of  the  Western  Allies  the 

16 


THE  COLLAPSE  OF  SUPERMAN 

British  fleet  was  mobilized.  The 
German  Supermen  swept  through 
Belgium  and  northeastern  France, 
outnumbering  the  hastily  assem- 
bled troops  of  their  adversaries 
three  or  four  to  one;  but  even  this 
disparity  in  their  favor  would  not 
have  given  them  their  swift  success 
if  it  had  not  been  for  their  gigantic 
howitzers,  which  demolished  forti- 
fications supposed  to  be  impreg- 
nable. 

So  far  it  appears  that  neither  in 
those  early  combats  nor  later  did 
the  German  soldiers  win  in  open 
fight  against  an  equal  number  of 
foes.  The  same  was  true  in  the  war 
of  1870.^  This  is  a  strange  record 

^  In  1866,  in  the  war  between  Prussia  and 
Austria,  the  Prussians  had  221,000  troops  at 
the  decisive  battle  of  Sadowa,  the  Austrians 

17 


THE   COLLAPSE   OF   SUPERMAN 

for  Supermen!  A  German  Super- 
man, we  might  innocently  think, 
ought  to  be  a  match  for  at  least 
three  or  four  French  or  British 
fighters.  It  turned  out,  however, 
that  it  was  the  German  readiness, 
the  superior  equipment,  and,  above 
all,  the  surprise,  which  gave  the 
Kaiser  his  immense  and  immediate 
advantage.  And  yet  with  all  these 
elements  and  Prussian  prestige  — 

had  only  200,000.  In  the  Franco-Prussian  War 
of  1870,  the  inequalities  were  still  greater.  At 
Woerth,  the  Germans  numbered  84,000,  the 
French  39,000.  At  Gravelotte,  the  Germans  had 
205,000,  the  French  39,000.  At  Reichshoffen, 
the  Germans  180,000,  the  French  45,000.  At 
St.  Private  the  Germans  80,000,  the  French 
18,000.  At  Sedan,  the  Germans  220,000,  the 
French  100,000.  These  figures  pay  a  high  trib- 
ute to  the  German  strategy  which  always  con- 
trived to  bring  a  larger  force  than  the  enemy's 
into  battle;  they  do  not,  however,  exalt  the 
German  soldier  in  a  man-to-man  contest  with 
foreign  foes. 

18 


THE   COLLAPSE  OF  SUPERMAN 

which  had  become  a  legend  —  in 
his  favor,  he  was  not  able  to 
achieve  his  purpose.  His  trium- 
phal entry  into  Paris  —  to  cele- 
brate which,  with  true  German 
thoroughness,  he  struck  a  medal 
before  the  war  began  —  never  took 
place.  At  the  end  of  the  first  week 
in  September  the  French,  under 
Manoury,  made  a  sudden  dash  on 
the  German  right,  which  upset  Von 
Kluck's  plans  and  so  thoroughly 
dislocated  the  entire  strategy  of  the 
German  General  Staff  that  on 
September  9  Foch's  army  drove 
like  a  thunderbolt  through  the 
German  centre,  saved  Paris,  sent 
all  the  Kaiser's  forces  in  full  retreat 
eastward  and  northward,  pricked 
the  Supermen's  dream  of  World 
Dominion  and  saved  civihzation. 

19 


THE  COLLAPSE  OF  SUPERMAK 

Here  again  we  are  perplexed. 
Wliieh  were  the  Supermen  —  the 
German  centre  of  Prussian  Guards 
and  Saxons,  who  crumbled  be- 
fore Foch's  Frenchmen,  or  those 
Frenchmen  themselves?  Would  it 
be  correct  to  define  a  German  Su- 
perman as  one  who  cannot  stand 
up  against  a  mere  ordinary  foreign 
man?  The  Ninety-three  Profes- 
sors who  certified  to  the  moral,  not 
less  than  to  the  military,  perfection 
of  Germany  would  dissent  from 
this;  and  yet  how  does  it  profit  you 
to  be  a  Superman  if  you  run  before 
any  smaller  variety  of  men? 

Looking  back,  we  see  that  the 
German  occupation  of  Belgium  and 
northeastern  France  was  due  to 
preparation  and  surprise,  and  not 
to  any  superhuman  quality;  and 

20 


THE  COLLAPSE  OF  SUPERMAN 

this  is  true  of  all  the  Teutonic  suc- 
cesses during  the  first  two  years  of 
the  war.  The  Germans  invariably 
had  either  larger  forces  or  far  su- 
perior equipment,  or  both.  They 
accomplished  their  great  drive  into 
Russia  at  a  time  when  the  Russian 
supply  of  munitions  was  exhausted. 
For  the  Germans  to  sweep  almost 
defenseless  masses  of  Russians  be- 
fore them  was,  therefore,  a  scarcely 
more  glorious  feat  than  it  was  for 
the  Spaniards  to  put  to  rout  the 
Aztecs  with  their  bows  and  ar- 
rows, or  for  the  heroic  ranchmen 
who  dropped  from  the  fatigue 
of  slaughtering  rabbits  in  a  drive. 
Search  where  we  will,  we  find 
nothing  Supermannish  in  such  vic- 
tories. 
Ah,  but  does  not  the  perfect 

SI 


THE  COLLAPSE  OF  SUPERMAN 

preparation  indicate  the  Super- 
man? Let  us  examine.  If  you  had 
spent  your  Hfe  from  boyhood  up 
using  dumb-bells,  should  you  ex- 
pect to  qualify  as  a  Superman  if  in 
a  competition  with  your  neighbors, 
who  had  devoted  themselves  to 
golf  and  tennis  and  yachting,  you 
should  lift  with  ease  the  heaviest 
dumb-bell,  which  the  strongest  of 
them  could  not  stir?  Hardly.  Well 
for  fifty  years  the  Prussians  had 
made  militarism  the  chief  business 
of  life;  wherever  possible  they  ap- 
plied each  new  invention  to  im- 
proving their  arms  and  equipment; 
they  indulged  in  three  wars,  which 
gave  them  invaluable  practice. 
They  foresaw  that  logistics  would 
be  not  less  important  than  strategy 
or  tactics  in  the  conflict  they  were 

22 


THE  COLLAPSE  OF  SUPERMAN 

secretly  preparing  for.  Nor  should 
we  minimize  the  stimulating  eflPect 
which  the  knowledge  that  he  would 
be  called  upon  to  serve  in  an  enter- 
prise for  the  glory  of  the  Father- 
land, and  with  certain  success  in 
sight,  produced  on  each  recruit. 

None  of  this  militarist  training 
went  on  in  Great  Britain,  where 
the  army  in  peace  time,  composed 
of  volunteers,  numbered  less  than 
two  hundredths  per  cent  of  the 
population,  and  since  the  Crimea 
had  never  faced  a  European  enemy. 
France,  on  the  contrary,  had  been 
compelled  by  the  German  menace 
to  maintain  a  large  armament;  but, 
her  purpose  being  defense  and  not 
aggression,  she  conscripted  rela- 
tively fewer  men  than  did  the  Ger- 
mans; and  her  population  num- 

23 


THE  COLLAPSE  OF  SUPERMAN 

bered  less  than  forty  millions,  while 
Germany's  was  nearly  seventy  mil- 
lions. Her  military  system  was  also 
less  efficiently  carried  out.  Russia, 
likewise,  and  Italy  had  conscrip- 
tion and  imitated  German  meth- 
ods, but  without  German  thor- 
oughness. 

It  is  not  unfair  to  say,  accord- 
ingly, that  when  Germany  sprang 
the  test  of  ordeal  by  battle  on  her 
European  neighbors  they  were 
scarcely  less  ready  than  were  the 
competitors  of  our  expert  in  dumb- 
bells to  cope  with  him.  To  argue 
from  their  enemies'  unprepared- 
ness  that  the  Germans  were  Super- 
men would  violate  any  logic  based 
on  reason.  And  here  a  grotesque 
conundrum  suggests  itself:  If  it 
took  the   Germans,   by  devoting 

24 


THE  COLLAPSE  OF  SUPERMAN 

their  chief  attention  to  miHtarism, 
forty  years  to  organize  a  magnifi- 
cent army,  and  if  it  has  taken  the 
Enghsh,  a  non-mihtarist  nation, 
two  years  to  organize  an  army 
equal  and  in  some  respects  supe- 
rior to  the  German,  who  are  the 
Supermen? 

Perhaps  I  am  not  deferent 
enough  to  the  Superman;  but  I 
deny  that  anything  —  whether  a 
Kaiser  made  of  flesh  and  blood  or  a 
Krupp  gun  made  of  steel  —  should 
be  an  object  of  servile  reverence, 
much  less  of  worship.  If  I  were 
hunting  for  a  Superman  I  should 
look  for  him  in  some  one  who 
achieved  great  victories  against 
great  odds.  This  has  not  been  true 
of  the  Germans  in  the  present  war. 
Hindenburg  in  East  Prussia  and 

25 


THE   COLLAPSE  OF  SUPERMAN 

Poland,  Mackensen  in  Galicia  and 
the  Balkans,  Falkenhayn  in  Ru- 
mania, and  the  generals  who  led 
the  dash  into  France  and  Belgium 
—  all  had  great  odds  in  their  favor. 
As  soon  as  the  Allies  rose  anywhere 
near  to  an  equality  with  them, 
the  German  spectacular  successes 
ceased. 

Even  the  fact  that  at  the  begin- 
ning of  the  war  the  total  available 
man  power  of  the  Germans  was 
only  one  half,  that  of  the  Allies  does 
not  entitle  them  to  pose  as  Super- 
men, for  their  geographical  position 
and  the  abundance  of  their  means 
of  transportation  more  than  dou- 
bles —  probably  it  trebles  —  their 
military  potentiality.  No  other 
country  in  Europe  has  so  fine  a 
natural  defense  as  Germany  with 

26 


THE   COLLAPSE   OF  SUPERMAN 

Austria  bound  to  her.  The  fringe 
of  neutral  states,  Holland  and 
Denmark,  protects  her  from  attack 
by  sea;  the  ridges  of  Alsace  and 
Lorraine,  accessible  only  through 
two  or  three  gaps,  which  have  been 
splendidly  fortified,  fend  her  from 
French  invasion  on  the  west;  neu- 
tral Switzerland  serves  as  a  bul- 
wark on  the  southwest  ;isAustria  lies 
between  her  and  Italian  or  Slavic 
aggression  on  the  southeast;  and 
her  eastern  frontier,  dotted  with 
lakes  and  marshes,  can  be  reached 
by  Russian  invaders  only  after 
they  have  crossed  long  stretches  of 
country.  Five  German  strategic 
railways  can  rush  German  troops 
by  the  hundred  thousand  to  pro- 
tect that  frontier  at  any  point  from 
the  Russians,  against  one  railway 

27 


THE  COLLAPSE  OF  SUPERMAN 

available  for  carrying  the  Russian 
armies  westward. 

The  girdle  of  neutral  states  which 
have  clandestinely  furnished  Ger- 
many with  food  and  military  sta- 
ples, thereby  prolonging  the  war 
by  at  least  a  year,  should  also  be 
counted  as  an  immense  help  to  her. 
If  those  states  had  been  integral 
parts  of  Germany  that  help  could 
not  have  been  rendered.  Holland 
and  Denmark  would  have  been 
blockaded  from  the  start. 

To  the  incalculable  advantage 
due  to  geography  must  be  added 
that  which  the  Germans  enjoyed 
by  seizing  Belgium  and  northeast- 
ern France  —  a  seizure  that  in- 
volved the  breaking  by  the  Germans 
of  solemn  treaties,  and  pilloried 
them  as  outlaws  from  civilization. 

28 


THE   COLLAPSE  OF  SUPERMAN 

We  can  hardly  contend  that  the 
surprise  and  deceit  and  the  outrage 
on  morals  and  humanity  which 
were  the  elements  of  their  western 
invasion  can  qualify  them  as  Super- 
men, unless  we  agree  that  the  ruf- 
fian who  bludgeons  his  victim  from 
behind  at  night  is  a  Superman. 

Instead  of  calling  Supermen  the 
German  troops  who  were  shuttled 
from  east  to  west  and  from  west  to 
east  in  admirably  appointed  rail- 
way trains,  which  took  along  with 
them  artillery,  food,  and  muni- 
tions, I  should  apply  that  term  to 
Napoleon's  Army  of  Italy,  which 
marched  on  foot  from  Paris  to 
Venice,  ill-fed,  ill-clothed,  ill- 
equipped  —  a  mob  rather  than  an 
army  —  led  by  the  "little  puppet 
with  disheveled  hair,"  and  which 

29 


THE  COLLAPSE  OF  SUPERMAN 

wiped  out  three  Austrian  armies  of 
much  larger  numbers,  commanded 
by  Austria's  most  renowned  gen- 
erals. Similarly,  w^as  not  Napo- 
leon's assembling  of  the  host  with 
which  he  invaded  Russia  in  1812 
a  more  astonishing  task  than  that 
of  mobilizing  the  Germans  in  1914, 
or  of  dispatching  them  in  trains 
and  motors  and  trucks  and  lor- 
ries to  any  desired  point?  Napo- 
leon's conscripts  footed  it  from  the 
Pyrenees,  or  from  Finisterre,  or 
from  Calabria  —  to  Vilna.  As  you 
are  whirled  at  forty  miles  an  hour 
across  the  American  continent 
amid  such  modest  luxury  as  a 
Pullman  car  affords,  if  you  hap- 
pen to  think  of  the  pioneers, 
thirsty,  weary,  footsore,  shrouded 
in  doubts,  who  first  blazed  the  trail 

30 


TJIE  COLLAPSE   OF  SUPERMAN 

over  the  prairies  and  the  Rockies  to 
the  Pacific,  do  you  look  down  on 
them  as  mere  men?  Do  you  look 
up  to  yourseK  as  a  Superman? 

With  the  best  intentions  in  the 
world,  I  fear  that  we  must  dismiss 
the  Superman  myth;  or  at  least  we 
must  so  revise  our  definition  of 
Superman  that  it  will  fit  not  those 
who  can  do  things  on  a  large  scale 
because  they  have  every  contriv- 
ance at  their  disposal,  but  those 
who  work  marvels  with  a  meagre 
outfit.  Call  Columbus  in  his  tiny 
Santa  Maria,  of  one  hundred  tons 
burthen,  a  Superman  if  you  will, 
but  not  the  captain  of  a  fifty- 
thousand-ton  ocean  liner. 


Ill 

In  our  glimpses  at  individual  Su- 
permen and  at  concrete  exam- 
ples of  their  acts,  perhaps  we 
have  not  paid  sufficient  respect  to 
the  philosophic  theory  of  the  Su- 
perman. The  Germans  assure  us 
that  in  order  to  understand  them 
we  must  think  Germanly.  They  see 
themselves  as  Supermen  —  giants 
among  dwarfs;  but  through  some 
regrettable  defect  in  our  vision  we 
see  them  as  a  race  of  great  vigor 
and  remarkable  attainments  in  cer- 
tain fields,  but  not  at  all  as  demi- 
gods or  even  as  Titans.  The  notion 
that  here  and  there  a  Superman  is 
born,  a  person  "beyond  good  and 

32 


THE  COLLAPSE   OF   SUPERMAN 

evil,"  who  is  expected  not  only  not 
to  curb  his  appetites  and  passions, 
but  to  prove  his  Supermannishness 
by  giving  them  a  free  rein,  is  a  very 
inebriating  notion  if  you  are  clever 
enough  to  persuade  yourself  and 
your  group  that  you  are  one  of 
these  privileged  creatures. 

The  champions  of  the  philosophy 
of  Supermania  lean  heavily  on  bi- 
ology to  support  their  creed.  They 
have  been  misled  by  the  phrase 
"the  survival  of  the  fittest."  You 
might  infer,  to  hear  them  buzz, 
that  only  the  fittest  survive,  or,  to 
put  it  conversely,  the  fact  that  you 
survive  is  proof  that  you  are  the 
"fittest."  Possibly  a  German  com- 
placently accepts  this  as  a  self- 
evident  truth,  but  most  of  us  non- 
Germans,  even  in  our  moods  of 

33 


THE  COLLAPSE  OF  SUPERMAN 

most  inflated  seH-esteem,  must 
have  our  doubts  as  to  our  being  the 
*' fittest."  Historians  will  recall 
many  individuals,  dead  long  since 
in  body  but  living  on  in  spirit,  who 
were  "fitter"  than  any  among  us 
to  survive;  nay,  were  there  not 
many  groups  and  even  periods  in 
the  past  which  our  "fittest"  to-day 
cannot  match? 

To  interpret  history  in  this  me- 
chanical fashion  is  as  unsafe  as  it 
would  be  to  try  to  climb  the  Mat- 
terhorn  by  practicing  the  goose- 
step.  If  the  "survival  of  the  fit- 
test" meant  what  the  German  be- 
lievers in  the  phrase  claim,  then 
long  before  our  geological  era  one 
species  of  mammals  would  have 
devoured  all  the  others,  and  there 
would  be  only  one  triumphantly 

34 


THE  COLLAPSE  OF  SUPERMAN 

*' fittest"  kind  of  bird,  of  insect, 
and  of  fish;  and  long  ago  one 
breed  of  men  would  have  swal- 
lowed up  or  exterminated  all  other 
breeds.  Has  this  happened?  Has  a 
tribe  of  Supermen  arisen  to  domi- 
nate the  world? 

There  have  been  conquering 
races — Assyrians,  Egyptians,  Mac- 
edonians, Romans,  Teutonic  Bar- 
barians, —  ancient  and  modern, 
—  Normans,  Arabs,  Turks,  Span- 
iards, Anglo-Saxons,  Frenchmen, 
Prussians,  —  but  it  would  be  diffi- 
cult to  discover  the  quality  com- 
mon to  them  all  which  made  each 
in  turn  "fittest."  And  if  we  dis- 
covered it  we  should  learn  only 
what  made  them  military  con- 
querors. 

But  ability  for  military  conquest 

35 


THE  COLLAPSE  OF  SUPERMAN 

is  only  one  form  of  "fitness,"  and 
not  the  highest.  Marcus  Aurehus, 
for  instance,  would  have  gone 
down  before  one  of  the  brawny 
gladiators  in  the  Colosseum;  or,  to 
make  the  point  even  clearer,  say 
that  he  had  succumbed  to  a  lion  in 
the  arena.  How  would  his  fitness 
to  survive  compare  with  that  of  the 
gladiator  or  the  wild  beast  .^^  Over 
the  earth  the  common  fly  —  Musca 
domestica  —  is  more  plentifully  dif- 
fused than  even  the  Germans ;  fear 
of  lese-majeste  restrains  us  from 
making  any  inference  as  to  their 
relative  fitness. 

So  there  are,  it  seems,  different 
kinds  of  fitness  to  survive ;  there  are 
heights  of  excellence  not  dreamt  of 
by  the  German  General  Staff;  and 
there  is  human  progress  not  to  be 

36 


THE  COLLAPSE  OF  SUPERMAN 

measured  or  attained  by  the  Prus- 
sian goose-step.  "Fitness  to  sur- 
vive?" After  nearly  eighteen  hun- 
dred years  the  golden  thoughts  of 
Marcus  Aurelius  survive  to-day  in 
the  hearts  of  thousands,  but  the 
names  of  the  victorious  gladiators 
in  the  Flavian  Amphitheatre  are 
forgotten  as  those  of  Hindenburg, 
Moltke,  and  Mackensen  will  be 
when  other  standards  of  fitness 
than  those  of  slaughter  rule  again. 
In  days  of  Frightfulness  like  the 
present  it  gives  solace  to  reflect 
that  we  can  still  hear  Theocritus 
singing  his  idyls  among  the  moonlit 
groves,  while  all  the  wicked  tyrants 
of  Syracuse  associated  with  atro- 
cious crimes  are  mere  names  or 
even  less.  And  if  to-day  we  had  to 
choose  between  preserving  the  art, 

37 


THE  COLLAPSE  OF  SUPERMAN 

literature,  and  history  of  Athens 
and  the  Kultur  of  Germany  under 
WilHam  II,  can  there  be  any  doubt 
as  to  which  we  should  jettison?  .In 
blotting  out  the  Sieges  Allee  we 
should  deprive  posterity  of  many 
a  smile,  and  in  throwing  over  the 
records  of  Pan-Germanism  and 
Supermania  we  should  deprive  it 
of  records  of  otherwise  incredible 
racial  hallucination;  but,  after 
all,  Treitschke,  Nietzsche,  and  the 
Hohenzollern  Kaiser  are  but  for  a 
generation,  whereas  Thucydides, 
Plato,  and  Pericles  are  for  all  time. 

May  we  not  conclude,  therefore, 
that  when  we  subject  the  Super- 
man to  the  test  of  philosophy,  or  of 
biology,  or  of  history,  they  refuse 
to  recognize  his  claims? 

"We  have  seen  you  before,"  they 

38 


THE  COLLAPSE   OF  SUPERMAN 

say;  "we  have  watched  your  recur- 
rent appearance  in  human  affairs 
ever  since  the  time  when  man,  ceas- 
ing to  be  a  quadruped,  stood  up 
on  his  hind  feet.  We  strongly  sus- 
pect, if  you  will  permit  us  to  say 
so,  that  you  are  really  a  survival  of 
the  quadruped,  or  Zn/raman,  in 
the  human  race.  We  admire  your 
adroitness  in  palming  off  Infra  as 
Super;  but  really  who  are  the  peo- 
ple whom  you  have  fooled  in  this 
way  .'^  Do  they  stand  on  their  heads, 
or  is  their  eyesight  twisted,  or  do 
they  dwell  in  asylums  for  the  in- 
sane, or  are  they  still  quadrupeds.'^'' 
They  are  none  of  these;  they  are 
Germans. 


IV 

J\t  the  outset  of  our  philosophic 
inquiry  a  chilHng  question  con- 
fronts us:  How  can  we  know  that 
the  Germans  are  Supermen?  If  the 
attributes  of  the  Superman  are 
above  those  of  mere  man,  what  fac- 
ulty has  mere  man  by  which  to 
recognize  them?  For  the  Superman 
is  not  simply  a  being  in  whom  the 
talents  of  mere  man  are  magni- 
fied many  times  —  he  is  a  higher 
creation.  We  can  know  Caesar, 
Socrates,  Napoleon,  Emerson,  be- 
cause they,  too,  were  men;  but  how 
can  we  know  the  Superman  any 
more  than  the  kitten  which  chases 
its  tail  on  the  floor  beside  me 
knows  my  nature  or  thoughts? 

40 


THE   COLLAPSE  OF  SUPERMAN 

Perhaps  our  only  way  is  to  as- 
sume that  the  Superman  belongs  to 
our  genus  and  to  study  him  experi- 
mentally as  we  would  any  other 
strange  creature.  So  we  shall  be 
able  to  value  him  in  human  terms, 
which  may  or  may  not  coincide 
with  the  value  he  has  set  upon  him- 
self. I  remarked  just  now  that  he 
does  not  appear  to  have  excelled 
even  in  science  in  those  large  dis- 
coveries, the  product  of  the  crea- 
tive imagination,  which  we  asso- 
ciate with  superior  minds.  The 
steamboat  was  invented  by  Fulton, 
an  American;  the  locomotive,  ap- 
plied to  the  railroad,  by  Stephen- 
son, an  Englishman;  the  telegraph 
by  Morse,  an  American;  wireless 
telegraphy  by  Marconi,  an  Italian 
with   an   Irish  mother;  the   tele- 

41 


THE  COLLAPSE  OF  SUPERMAN 

phone  by  Bell,  an  American;  and 
when  we  come  to  the  field  of  war 
implements  what  surprise  is  this? 
Not  German  Supermen,  but  mere 
men  of  other  races  dreamed,  de- 
vised, and  designed  them.  An 
American  named  Holland  put  the 
first  submarine  into  the  water;  he, 
too,  invented  the  submarine  tor- 
pedo; Maxim,  another  American, 
invented  the  machine  gun;  two 
American  brothers,  the  Wrights, 
set  flying  the  first  practical  air- 
planes; Bessemer,  an  Englishman, 
discovered  the  process  for  making 
steel,  without  which  Krupp  guns, 
large  or  small,  would  not  have  ex- 
isted; and  nearly  a  century  and  a 
half  ago  a  Frenchman,  Montgolfier, 
invented  the  balloon,  the  principle 
of  which  underlies  the  Zeppelin, 

42 


THE  COLLAPSE  OF  SUPERMAN 

the  dirigible,  and  all  similar  mod- 
ern varieties.  Even  in  the  art  of 
war  itself ,  it  was  not  the  Germans 
who  discovered  trench  warfare. 

Not  a  German  in  all  this  list. 
The  Supermen  turn  out  to  be 
amazingly  lavish  borrowers  of 
other  men's  ideas,  prolific  adapters, 
untiring  imitators.  Among  men  it 
is  the  discoverer  —  and  not  those 
who  follow  him  or  perhaps  improve 
upon  him  —  that  is  rated  highest. 
Can  the  ranking  be  reversed  among 
Supermen  .f^  Among  them  do  the 
second-rates  stand  higher  than  the 
first.? 

If  we  leave  the  sphere  of  inven- 
tion and  enter  that  of  basic  prin- 
ciples, we  find  that  no  German, 
but  a  modest  Englishman,  Charles 
Darwin,  announced  the  idea  which 

48 


THE  COLLAPSE  OF  SUPERMAN 

has  been  the  keynote  of  modern 
thought  and  of  modern  science. 
Louis  Pasteur,  a  modest  French- 
man demonstrated  the  true  meth- 
od of  biology;  Michael  Faraday, 
a  modest  Englishman,  laid  down 
the  laws  which  have  guided  all  sub- 
sequent students  and  appliers  of 
electricity;  Joseph  Lister,  another 
modest  Englishman,  conferred  upon 
this  suffering  world  the  boon  of 
antisepsis. 

Our  search  for  indisputable  proof 
that  Germans  have  been  Supermen 
in  these  many  fields  seems  barren. 
Can  they  have  been  mistaken.^ 
Does  not  the  giant  know  the  length 
of  his  own  belt.^  Who  are  we  to 
doubt  or  to  deny?  Is  it  not  pre- 
sumptuous in  moles  to  question  the 
magnitude  of  elephants.'^    In  fair- 

44 


THE  COLLAPSE  OF  SUPERMAN 

ness  we  must  judge  the  Germans 
by  their  achievements  in  the  activ- 
ity which  they  pronounce  supreme. 
That  activity  is  war,  the  sum  and 
crown  of  all  their  ideals  and  talents. 
I  have  hinted,  perhaps  too  auda- 
ciously, that  in  the  actual  war  the 
Germans  have  revealed  none  of 
those  transcendent  qualities  that 
must  be,  of  course,  the  martial  her- 
itage of  Supermen.  Let  us  glance 
once  more  at  this  matter,  which 
is  evidently  the  final  test  for  our 
poor  human  intelligence  of  the  Su- 
perman's claims. 

We  must  never  forget  that  when 
the  Kaiser  forced  his  Atrocious 
War  upon  the  world  in  August, 
1914,  he  commanded  the  most  stu- 
pendous army  the  world  had  ever 
seen;  in  equipment,  in  drill,  in  the 

45 


THE  COLLAPSE   OF   SUPERMAN 

speed  of  its  mobilization,  it  had  no 
rivals.  It  swept  on,  apparently  ir- 
resistible, for  thirty-six  days;  then 
Manoury  found  the  crevice  in  the 
German  giant's  armor,  plunged  his 
sword  into  it,  and  the  monster 
reeled  backward.  Four  days  later 
it  was  in  full  retreat.  This  is  puz- 
zling to  the  plain  common-sense 
man.  It  surprised  even  the  Ger- 
mans themselves.  In  the  happy 
days  of  Bourbon  despotism  in  the 
Two  Sicilies,  the  soldiers  were 
given  amulets,  which,  they  were 
assured,  would  render  them  invul- 
nerable to  the  bullets  of  their  ene- 
mies. What  must  a  Bourbon  sol- 
dier have  thought  when  he  was 
brought  to  the  ground  by  a  ball 
that  smashed  his  thigb.^  The  Kai- 
ser gave  his  German  soldiers  simi- 

46 


THE  COLLAPSE  OF  SUPERMAN 

lar  amulets  —  he  told  them  that 
they  were  Supermen  and  invincible. 
When  they  were  beaten  at  the 
Marne  and  only  by  their  superior 
running  ability  succeeded  in  reach- 
ing the  Aisne  in  time  to  dig  them- 
selves in  before  their  pursuers  came 
up  with  them,  were  they  troubled 
by  doubts  as  to  the  validity  of 
their  amulets?  Being  Germans, 
they  probably  indulged  in  no  sur- 
mises, for  the  German  soldier  is 
trained  not  to  think. 

But  a  few  weeks  later  the  Kaiser, 
having  been  baffled  at  the  Marne, 
decided  to  make  a  drive  on  Calais. 
What  could  hinder  him?  There 
were  a  hundred  thousand  British 
troops  round  Ypres,  but  the  Kaiser 
had  already  in  a  speech  sneered 
away  General  French's  **contempt- 

47 


THE  COLLAPSE  OF  SUPERM.IN 

ible  little  army."  The  Kaiser  had 
been  the  master  strategist  and  vic- 
tor in  the  German  grand  manoeu- 
vres for  twenty -five  years,  and  his 
verdict  on  military  qualities  must 
therefore  be  final.  So  he  sent  half  a 
million  of  his  best  troops  on  their 
promenade  to  Calais ;  but  at  Ypres 
the  '' Con  temp  tibles"  —  who  wear 
that  as  a  name  of  honor  forever  — 
stood  their  ground;  they  had  only 
rifles  and  small  field  pieces  to  op- 
pose the  heavy  artillery  and  the 
machine  guns  of  the  enemy;  they 
were  mostly  unused  to  European 
warfare  fighting  against  the  best 
regiments  of  Germany;  they  were 
only  Britishers  while  their  foes 
were  Germans.  And  yet  the  *'  Con- 
temptibles"  held  fast;  many  of 
them  died  with  a  cheer,  but  they 

48 


THE  COLLAPSE  OF  SUPERMAN 

held  fast.  The  flower  of  the  Kai- 
ser's army  never  got  beyond  Ypres, 
either  then  or  in  the  three  years 
that  have  followed. 

Here  is  another  puzzle  for  the 
plain  common-sense  mere  man.  If 
one  Britisher  can  check  and  virtu- 
ally defeat  five  Germans,  which  is 
the  real  Superman?  Let  us  pray  to 
be  "Contemptibles,"  and  let  us  not 
begrudge  the  beaten  Supermen 
their  Iron  Crosses. 

One  form  —  is  it  not  the  most 
loathsome?  —  of  German  mendac- 
ity and  deceit,  is  the  bribery  by  the 
Germans  of  the  armies  of  their  ene- 
mies. Thus  the  Superman  did  not 
overcome  the  Russians  by  superior 
military  skill  and  bravery,  but  by 
corrupting  those  Russians  —  from 
the  dweller  in  the  Imperial  Palace 

49 


THE  COLLAPSE  OF  SUPERMAN 

to  generals,  colonels,  and  mere  cap- 
tains —  who  had  charge  of  supply- 
ing the  Russian  armies  with  food, 
munitions,  and  clothing,  or  who  led 
the  troops.  Russia  was  sold  out  by 
traitors:  the  buyers  were  the  Ger- 
mans. So,  too,  the  regiments  which 
started  the  Italian  avalanche  of 
panic  at  Plezzo  had  previously 
been  stroked  by  German  agents. 
Here  again  is  a  strange  paradox. 
The  Supermen,  who  preach  that 
War  is  the  highest  business  of  life, 
the  pleasure  which  they  chiefly 
yearn  to  enjoy,  instead  of  indulging 
themselves  to  the  full  when  they 
can,  buy  off,  paralyse  with  bribes, 
the  foes  who  should  fight  them. 
What  can  this  be.^  Kultur  ?  Stone- 
wall Jackson  did  not  win  Chancel- 
lorsville  or  Grant  take  Vicksburg 

50 


THE  COLLAPSE  OF  SUPERMAN 

by  bribery.  But  then,  they  were 
not  Supermen,  they  were  not  Ger- 
mans; they  were  honest,  honor- 
able, and  chivalrous  soldiers,  and 
so  were  their  adversaries. 


iLxcEPT  for  the  way  in  which  the 
Germans  carried  out  Frightf  ulness 
after  the  war  began,  nothing  so 
startled  the  world  as  their  inability 
to  comprehend  the  point  of  view  of 
other  nations.  They  were  them- 
selves astonished  that  anybody 
should  criticize  their  campaign  of 
rape,  arson,  and  murder  in  Belgium 
and  France  or  their  disregard  of 
solemn  compacts.  "Is  not  war 
war?"  they  asked.  "Is  a  treaty 
more  than  a  scrap  of  paper?"  To 
them  it  was  inconceivable  that 
Belgium  should  hold  her  honor 
dearer  than  her  safety  —  that  Eng- 
land should  stand  by  her  pledges  — 

52 


THE  COLLAPSE  OF  SUPERMAN 

that  France  should  be  moved  by  an 
instinct  deeper  than  that  of  self- 
preservation.  The  Germans  had 
been  so  long  in  the  habit  of  assum- 
ing that  the  earth  revolved  on  a 
German  pivot  that  they  took  it  for 
granted  that  all  the  other  Powers 
would  accept  without  demur  the 
plea  of  "  German  necessity." 

In  ordinary  life  this  trait  is  com- 
mon enough;  but  instead  of  rever- 
ently kneeling  to  those  who  are 
afflicted  by  it  we  pity  them,  recom- 
mend sedatives  or  a  bag  of  ice  at 
the  base  of  the  brain,  and  medita- 
tion on  the  wisdom  of  humility.  If 
now  we  are  to  believe  that  the 
swelled  head  is  the  sign  of  the  Ger- 
man Superman,  shall  we  not  ask 
what  it  profits  him.^  If  the  state 
of  being  a  Superman  deprives  him 

53 


THE  COLLAPSE  OF  SUPERMAN 

of  the  power  to  understand  the 
thoughts  and  motives  of  mere 
men,  is  he  not  to  be  pitied?  For  he 
lies  at  the  mercy  of  insignificant 
creatures,  who  may  in  a  week  upset 
the  plans  he  has  been  maturing  for 
forty  years.  Who  would  wish  to  be 
a  Superman  on  those  terms?  An 
insignificant  mere  man  can  fathom 
the  German's  psychology  while  the 
German  is  as  nonplused  as  a  South 
Sea  Islander  before  an  English 
Bible. 

I  have  heard  it  argued  that 
though  we  must  deny  to  the  Ger- 
mans their  claim,  on  military 
grounds,  of  being  supreme,  —  for 
measuring  their  performance  in 
relation  to  their  resources  they 
have  fallen  far  short  of  even  a  mere 
man  like  Napoleon,  not  to  mention 

54 


THE   COLLAPSE   OF   SUPERMAN 

such  ancients  as  Alexander  and 
Hannibal,  —  yet  in  mendacity  and 
deceit  they  have  beaten  the  world's 
record.  Their  spies,  burrow  in  all 
lands;  their  cunning  corrodes  every 
class  of  society;  they  have  so  far 
forgotten  what  truth  is  that  they 
cannot  fabricate  a  lie  that  looks 
enough  like  truth  to  be  effective. 

Frankly,  the  evidence  is  in  their 
favor,  for  they  have  brought  men- 
dacity to  a  degree  of  perfection 
that  Metternich  or  Gortchakoff  or 
Frederick  the  Great  himself  would 
have  envied.  We  must  go  back  to 
the  Renaissance  —  to  the  consum- 
mate Papal  masters  of  craft,  to 
Sixtus  IV  or  to  Alexander  VI,  let  us 
say  —  to  find  their  equals. 

And  yet,  having  admitted  this, 
having   accepted   the   claim   that 

55 


THE  COLLAPSE  OF  SUPERMAN 

they  have  spread  their  spider's  web 
from  pole  to  pole,  we  ought  to  point 
out  in  the  name  of  truth  —  and 
truth  must  be  heard  even  when  lies 
are  in  question  —  that  the  most  ex- 
traordinary aptitude  for  cunning 
and  mendacity  would  not  entitle 
its  possessor  to  pass  for  a  Super- 
man. Lies  of  all  kinds  are  emitted 
like  counterfeit  money  by  the  lower 
grade  of  mere  men,  and  by  degen- 
erates, savages,  and  children.  To 
base  the  German  claim  to  Super- 
mania  on  a  lie,  therefore,  may  seem 
to  the  heartless  singularly  appro- 
priate; but  it  cannot  be  established. 
No  one  argues  that  the  Renais- 
sance delinquents  were  Supermen. 
Or,  if  we  look  simply  at  the  practi- 
cal side,  the  fact  that  an  American 
detective  served  Count  Bernstorff, 

56 


THE  COLLAPSE  OF  SUPERMAN 

German  Ambassador,  as  valet  for 
twenty  months  must  always  dispose 
of  the  German  Supermati's  claims 
to  supremacy  even  in  cunning. 

The  Superman,  as  a  member  of 
a  Superpeople  which,  according  to 
its  prophets,  must  choose  between 
world  power  and  downfall,  de- 
serves our  heartiest  sympathy.  If 
you,  reader,  were  to  be  suddenly 
obsessed  by  the  idea  that  you  must 
go  out  and  whip  everybody  you 
met  in  the  street  or  be  whipped  and 
cast  onto  the  dump,  would  not  you 
be  an  object  of  pity.^  Supermania 
seems  so  obsolete  that  it  requires 
almost  as  great  an  effort  of  the 
imagination  to  believe  that  it  has 
come  to  life  again  as  that  we  are 
in  danger  of  the  resurrection  of  the 
Harpies. 

57 


THE   COLLAPSE  OF  SUPERMAN 

In  an  insane  asylum  a  patient 
had  the  delusion  that  he  was  Julius 
Caesar,  and  his  keepers  humored 
him  —  and  all  went  well.  After  a 
while  another  patient  came  who 
imagined  himself  Charlemagne. 
He  began  to  rattle  the  imaginary 
scabbard  of  an  imaginary  sword 
and  to  strut  imperially;  and  the 
keepers  humored  him  too  —  and 
all  went  well.  That  is  the  com- 
mon-sense way  in  which,  outside 
of  Germany,  they  treat  victims  of 
Supermania.  Beyond  the  Rhine, 
however,  they  prefer  a  different 
regime.  They  say,  *'Hail,  Caesar!" 
or  "Hoch!  Hoch!  Charlemagne!" 
and  they  give  him  a  real  sword  in 
a  real  scabbard,  and  obsequiously 
kiss  the  hem  of  his  garment;  and  so 
they  confirm  his  delusion  in  him. 

58 


THE   COLLAPSE  OF  SUPERMAN 

But  presently  the  delusion  reacts 
on  themselves. 

Granted  that  ambition  is  rooted 
very  deep  in  the  human  heart,  its 
gratification  in  the  form  of  domi- 
nating a  conquered  people  has  long 
since  lost  savor  for  civilized  men 
and  women.  To  gloat  over  the  fact 
that,  thanks  to  your  superior  force, 
you  can  compel  others  to  do  your 
bidding  against  their  will  allies  you 
with  the  earlier  types  of  barbarians 
who  took  delight  in  making  slaves 
of  their  men  captives  and  concu- 
bines of  the  women.  That  is  the 
attitude  bred  by  despotism.  Some 
of  us  have  been  so  genuinely  im- 
bued with  Democracy  that  we  feel 
not  merely  aversion  but  shame  at 
the  thought  of  compulsion  derived 
from  brute  force,  and  we  felt  not  ela- 

59 


THE   COLLAPSE  OF  SUPERMAN 

tion  but  repugnance  when,  through 
a  cruel  stroke  of  fortune,  several 
million  Filipinos  became  our  "sub- 
jects." Weaklings  that  we  are,  we 
are  unworthy  to  catch  that  form  of 
Superviania  Teutonica  furibunda. 

With  all  its  defects,  history  must 
at  least  be  credited  with  one  com- 
pensating virtue  —  it  shows  us  that 
there  is  nothing  new  under  the  sun. 
Amid  great  calamities  or  horrors 
or  despair  wise  Clio  whispers: 
*'This  has  happened  before;  worse 
than  this  have  I  seen;  this  too  shall 
pass  away." 

History  is  not  a  prophet,  "but 
only  recently  she  said:  **The  strug- 
gle between  right  and  might  is 
eternal.  A  century  and  more  ago 
the  gospel  of  the  rights  of  man, 
of  democracy,  was   embodied  in 

60 


THE   COLLAPSE   OF  SUPERMAN 

French  armies  which  marched  un- 
der the  command  of  Napoleon  from 
end  to  end  in  Europe,  shaking 
down  thrones  and  institutions. 
The  personal  ambition  of  Napoleon 
strove  to  use  this  earth-shaking 
force  for  his  selfish  ends.  Then  Eu- 
rope rose  and  destroyed  him,  but 
Democracy  went  marching  on." 


VI 

JLovERS  of  fact  cannot  fail  to  be 
grateful  to  the  Germans,  the  self- 
announced  Supermen,  for  their 
complete  demonstration  that  there 
are  no  Supermen.  Even  over  here 
in  America  it  was  a  little  annoying 
to  harbor  the  suspicion  that  pos- 
sibly the  German  professor,  or  the 
editor  of  the  German  newspaper,  or 
the  fellow  who  blew  up  factories 
and  wrecked  trains  and  hid  bombs 
in  passenger  steamers,  being  Ger- 
man, might  be  a  Superman.  To 
Yankee  eyes  the  professor  was  sim- 
ply a  sneak,  oily  and  eely;  the  edi- 
tor one  of  the  brood  whom  Bis- 
marck called  "reptile " ;  the  bcHnber 

62 


THE  COLLAPSE  OF  SUPERMAN 

a  low  villain  in  whom  great  cow- 
ardice did  not  preclude  great  crime. 
Our  Yankee  eyes  have  been  justi- 
fied by  the  pricking  of  the  Super- 
man bubble.  The  Kaiser's  workers 
here  are  no  more  and  no  less  than 
our  Yankee  eyes  have  seen  them 
to  be  —  curious  types  of  Inframen 
whose  portraits,  under  other  names, 
adorn  the  Rogues'  Galleries,  and 
whose  peculiar  activities  are  the 
study  of  the  criminal  pathologists 
of  many  nations.  Even  were  the 
Germans  to  win  the  War,  the  fact 
would  remain  that  they  are  not 
Supermen.  The  qualities  they  have 
tried  to  win  by  link  them  with  Cali- 
ban—  not  with  the  angels. 

The  collapse  of  the  Superman 
myth  will  bring  relief  not  only  to 
those  who  accepted  it  on  too  slight 

63 


THE  COLLAPSE  OF  SUPERMAN 

warrant  and  feared  that  the  Ger- 
man Supermen  would  overrun  the 
world  and  persecute  and  eretinize 
its  inhabitants,  but  it  will  also  re- 
lieve those  who  saw  that  the  Su- 
perman creed,  if  true,  meant  the 
negation  of  whatever  moral  and 
spiritual  ideals  mankind  have  laid 
hold  of  in  the  course  of  their  pain- 
ful ascent  from  savagery. 

To  some  of  us  it  seemed  rather 
late  in  the  day  for  any  of  our  con- 
temporaries to  puff  out  their  chests 
and  say:  "Behold,  we  are  the 
Chosen  People!"  And  when  they 
flaunted  before  our  skeptical  gaze 
their  affidavit  to  that  effect,  signed 
by  Professor  Haeckel,  and  Profes- 
sor Harnack,  and  the  Professor  of 
Entomology  This  and  the  Professor 
of  Etymology  That,  and  all  the 

64 


THE  COLLAPSE  OF  SUPERMAN 

other  ninety-three  incarnations  of 
German  veracity  —  and  bootlick- 
ing —  instead  of  being  convinced, 
our  irreverent  minds  began  to 
wonder  whether  Haeckel,  Harnack, 
and  the  rest  had  been  cultivating 
their  special  fields  of  science  with 
the  same  disregard  of  fact  that 
they  displayed  in  the  easily  veri- 
fiable theory  of  the  Superman. 

The  doctrine  of  the  Chosen  Peo- 
ple came  at  an  early  stage  of  devel- 
opment. Readers  of  the  Old  Tes- 
tament find  it  tenaciously  held 
by  some  of  the  ancient  Hebrew 
tribes  in  Syria.  For  it  to  reappear 
three  thousand  years  later  among 
the  Germans,  whose  Hohenzollern 
masters  despised  Jewry  and  Jews 
except  when  they  could  borrow 
money  from  them  or  use  them  as 

65 


THE  COLLAPSE  OF  SUPERMAN 

spies,  seemed  a  comical  reversion 
to  an  outworn  primitive  concept. 
Some  of  its  supporters  disguised  it 
a  little  by  clothing  it  in  modern 
scientific  phrase.  We  have  heard 
their  assertions  about  the  "sur- 
vival of  the  fittest."  Others  tell  us 
that  there  have  been  only  two 
"male"  races  —  the  Roman  and 
the  German.  The  Romans  sub- 
dued all  the  "female"  races  of 
their  epoch;  the  German  mission  is 
to  bring  all  the  "female"  races  of 
our  time  under  their  subjection.  A 
delightful  example  of  unconscious 
humor!  Solomon,  the  sovereign  of 
the  Chosen  People  in  B.C.  990,  pos- 
sessed a  thousand  flesh-and-blood 
females;  William  II,  sovereign  of 
the  German  chosen  people  in  a.d. 
1914,  aspired  to  possess  as  many 

66 


THE  COLLAPSE  OF  SUPERMAN 

"female"  races.  So  would  the  in- 
timations of  Holy  Scripture  be  ful- 
filled by  the  establishment  of  a 
political  world-harem  at  Berlin. 

The  cult  of  the  Superman  could 
flourish  only  in  a  time  and  among 
a  people  given  over  to  materialism. 
The  astonishing  feats  of  the  Ger- 
mans were  the  product,  as  we  saw, 
not  of  unusual  genius  —  far  less  of 
any  superhuman  faculty  —  but  of 
a  nation  whose  men,  women,  and 
children,  old  and  young,  had  been 
reduced  to  so  complete  a  state  of 
mechanical  obedience  that  they 
could  be  directed  by  a  single  will 
just  as  every  cog,  wheel,  belt,  and 
spindle  of  a  factory  is  controlled  by 
the  engineer  who  turns  the  power 
on  or  off.  You  may  marvel,  if  you 
will,  at  the  success  that  those  have 

67 


THE  COLLAPSE  OF  SUPERMAN 

had  whose  interest  it  was  to  bring 
seventy  million  human  beings  to 
the  state  of  machines;  but  when 
you  look  abroad  over  nature  or 
over  history  you  will  come  upon  so 
many  examples  of  docility  and  imi- 
tation that  you  will  perceive  that 
these  qualities  belong  to  a  lower 
rather  than  to  a  higher  order  of  in- 
telligence. Watch  a  flock  of  sheep 
scampering  after  their  bellwether, 
or  a  procession  of  caterpillars  crawl- 
ing in  an  unbroken  line,  one  be- 
hind the  other,  wherever  the  leader 
takes  them.  How  obedient  they 
are!  How  German!  Remember 
such  vast  collective  enterprises  as 
the  Crusades,  in  which  not  merely 
one  people  but  all  the  countries  of 
Christendom  —  even  tens  of  thou- 
sands of  little  children,  so  truly 

68 


THE  COLLAPSE  OF  SUPERMAN 

childish  is  the  German  frame  of 
mind  —  were  impelled  by  the  same 
motive;  remember  with  what  effi- 
ciency the  Inquisition  did  its  work 
in  Europe  and  America,  and  at 
its  height  yielded  nothing  in  thor- 
oughness and  in  black  results  to 
the  highest  Prussian  standard.  The 
thing  itself  is  old;  only  this  recent 
manifestation  and  the  names  are 
new. 

On  the  teachability  of  the  human 
biped  his  progress,  of  course,  de- 
pends. Civilization  inheres  in  the 
doctrines  he  is  taught  and  in  the 
spirit  in  which  he  uses  them,  — 
the  spirit:  for  the  wisest  and  best 
men  have  discerned  in  man  some- 
thing invisible,  intangible,  imma- 
terial, but  most  real,  to  which  they 
give  this  name.  There  are  two  sorts 

69 


THE  COLLAPSE  OF  SUPERMAN 

of  education:  The  one  endeavors 
to  liberate  the  spirit;  the  other  to 
train  those  faculties  which  spring 
from  the  physical  nature  of  man. 
The  finished  product  of  the  former 
education  is  an  individual  who 
thinks  for  himself  and  wills  for  him- 
self —  and  recognizes  his  moral 
responsibility;  that  of  the  latter 
is  a  machine  who  receives  his 
thoughts  from  outside  and  whose 
will  and  acts  are  controlled  by  a 
master. 

Submissiveness,  obedience,  do- 
cility, and  all  other  forms  of  protec- 
tive coloration  from  fear  date  from 
primitive  times,  when  they  were 
the  effects  produced  by  superior 
brute  force  on  the  weak.  Later, 
cunning  in  various  guises  managed 
to  share  the  mastery  with  force.  In 

70 


THE  COLLAPSE  OF  SUPERMAN 

one  way  or  another  the  weak  were 
controlled  through  their  fears ;  and, 
however  we  disguise  it,  the  same  is 
true  to-day. 

But  certain  aspirations  are  al- 
most as  instinctive  as  fears,  and  it 
is  by  playing  on  these  aspirations 
that  the  greatest  workers  of  ini- 
quity —  ambitious  war  lords  and 
religious  fanatics  —  have  dissem- 
bled their  purposes  from  the  multi- 
tudes whom  they  employed  to  do 
them.  Patriotism  and  religion  are 
the  commonest,  the  most  effective 
of  these  deceptions.  Either  of  them 
has  the  power,  like  a  terrible  drug, 
to  deprive  its  victim  of  his  normal 
human  character.  How  else  ex- 
plain the  pious  edification  with 
which  crowds  of  the  ''faithful" 
witnessed  the  tortures  and  slaying 

71 


THE  COLLAPSE  OF  SUPERMAN 

of  heretics;  or  the  frenzied  exulta- 
tion of  the  spectators  of  the  orgies 
of  the  French  Revolution  —  wor- 
shipers not  of  Saint  Dominic  but  of 
Saint  Guillotine  —  for  whose  pa- 
triotic edification  the  heads  could 
not  drop  fast  enough  into  the 
blood-soaked  sawdust?  An  unlim- 
ited capacity  for  hero-worship  — 
which,  like  love,  is  blind  —  shows 
itself  early  in  the  development  of 
the  human  race,  and  has  been  al- 
most as  great  a  source  of  evil  as  of 
good.  If  you  turn  your  hero-wor- 
,ship  inward  to  yourself  the  efforts 
of  all  the  angels  cannot  save  you 
from  falling,  like  the  Germans,  into 
the  Superman  delusion.  ' 

To  make  men  individuals  and 
not  mechanical  atoms  of  a  mass;  to 
call  out  the  spirit  in  them  instead 

72 


THE   COLLAPSE  OF  SUPERMAN 

of  reducing  them  to  machines  — 
that  is  the  ideal  which  will  forever 
overcome  the  German  ideal  of  the 
Chosen  People  composed  of  Super- 
men, who,  when  scrutinized,  turn 
out  to  be  parts  of  a  gigantic  mech- 
anism. I  repeat,  man  is  com- 
pounded of  matter  and  of  spirit, 
and  since  his  creation  there  has 
been  a  perpetual  conflict  between 
the  two.  For  ages  together  matter 
seems  to  dominate;  and  then  spirit 
breaks  through,  frees  itself  and  re- 
generates the  world.  Under  the 
guise  of  the  Superman  matter  has* 
waged  its  latest  war  for  empire,  and 
it  has  been  beaten. 

Should  we  not  be  grateful  to  the 
Germans  who  have  organized  mat- 
ter into  the  most  remarkable  ma- 
chine man  has  ever  contrived  —  a 

73 


THE  COLLAPSE   OF  SUPERMAN 

machine  in  which  the  human  and 
the  material  parts  are  indistin- 
guishable; a  machine  which  the  oil 
of  Kaiser-worship  lubricates  and 
for  which  the  fuel  of  patriotism  sup- 
plies the  power;  a  machine  which 
represents  the  ultimate  attainment 
of  science?  Having  examined  the 
prodigy  can  we  not  refresh  our- 
selves with  the  thought  that  this  is 
the  best  and  the  worst  that  matter, 
whose  spokesman  is  German  sci- 
ence, can  do?  It  cost  Europe  more 
lives  than  the  present  Atrocious 
War  will  take,  to  get  rid  of  the  dia- 
bolical belief  in  witches.  Shall  we 
not  say  that  that  riddance  was 
worth  the  price?  Will  not  posterity 
declare  that  the  exploding  of  the 
Superman  delusion  and  of  the  giv- 
ing over  of  the  civilized  world  to 

74 


THE  COLLAPSE  OF  SUPERMAN 

German  domination,  which  that  de- 
lusion threatened,  was  also  worth 
its  price? 

More  than  thirty-five  centuries 
ago  the  race  which  then  inhabited 
the  Plain  of  Shinar,  the  Prussians 
of  those  times  and  perhaps  their 
forerunners,  looking  up  at  the  sun 
and  stars,  and,  more  conversant 
with  material  than  spiritual  laws, 
thought  that  they  could  build 
them  a  tower  by  which  they  could 
mount  to  those  celestial  regions 
and  possess  them.  But  the  Lord, 
looking  down  upon  their  city  and 
their  tower,  said:  "Behold,  the  peo- 
ple is  one,  and  they  have  all  one 
language;  and  this  they  begin  to 
do:  and  now  nothing  will  be  re- 
strained from  them,  which  they 
have  imagined  to  do.  Go  to,  let  us 

75 


THE  COLLAPSE  OF  SUPERMAN 

go  down,  and  there  confound  their 
language,  that  they  may  not  under- 
stand one  another's  speech.  So  the 
Lord  scattered  them  abroad  from 
thence  upon  the  face  of  all  the 
earth :  and  they  left  off  to  build  the 
city."  The  name  of  that  tower  was 
Babel,  and  never  since  that  time 
has  the  Lord  given  his  approval  to 
Supermen  who  would  conquer  the 
earth  in  the  Prussian  spirit.  The 
one  language  which  will  unite  all 
the  races  is  not  the  language  of 
Frightfulness  —  the  utterance  of 
physical  force  and  of  science  — 
but  the  language  of  Love,  through 
which  the  souls  of  men  speak. 

To  us  to-day  who  have  never  had 
any  doubts  as  to  the  relative  posi- 
tion of  matter  and  spirit,  and  who 
have   never   shared   the   folly   of 

76 


THE   COLLAPSE  OF  SUPERMAN 

thinking  that  we  or  any  other  peo- 
ple are  Supermen,  the  price  of  the 
Atrocious  War  is  staggering.  But 
the  great  gods  are  infinite,  and  we 
can  infer  the  importance  they  at- 
tach to  this  struggle  by  the  magni- 
tude of  the  human  sacrifice  they 
have  allowed. 

October,  1917. 


THE   END 


CAMBRIDGE  .  MASSACHUSETTS 
U    .    S    .   A 


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